Orality, Literacy, and Batak Concepts of Marriage Alliance

Research on the transition from oral to literate culture has much to offer students of kinship. This paper examines how the introduction of commercial printing and newspaper publishing has fostered a reformulation of Angkola Batak concepts of marriage alliance. Some folk portrayals present the wife-giver/wife-taker relationship in cosmological terms, while others present it as a social phenomenon. The diversity in homemade Angkola models of kinship is in part a consequence of the transition to literacy. Literate culture, moreover, is encircling ritual speech, forcing a rethinking of Batak kinship in line with literacy's own biases.